


breathing underwater

by jaekyu



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7965457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two victors during the 71st Hunger Games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathing underwater

**Author's Note:**

> i've been having trouble writing so here, have this thing i forced myself to work on for a few hours and don't mind the way it came out. i know hunger games aus might be a little passe but whatever.
> 
> might be a few more mistakes then usual, since i only proof read this once out of laziness. i'll edit it again later.

You fit into me  
like a hook into an eye  
a fish hook  
an open eye

(MARGARET ATWOOD)

 

i’m the blade,  
you’re the knife

(METRIC)

 

 

 

 

Resilience is learnt from suffering. It cannot be taught otherwise.

 

 

That is a lie. A lie they will close your mouth around, hold your nose and make you swallow. A lie they want settled into your stomach so that they can hurt you and say it was worth it.

They’ll say, you’re better off now, are you not? They’ll say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, doesn’t it? They’ll say, a man’s got a body of water. A man’s got a body of water and one day he’ll have to learn how to cross it. Aren’t you glad we taught you how to cross it?

Do not clench your teeth. Do not form a loose hand into a fist. Do not look them in the eye. Breathe slow through your nose. Nod.

Resilience is learnt through suffering. You’ve suffered a lot, haven’t you?

 

 

Seungcheol grows up trying to learn how to breathe salt water.

He lives a quiet existence in a quiet corner of District Four. His mother is a woman with quiet resolve, his father is a man quiet in his grave.

By the time Seungcheol is seven and a half he knows half a dozen sailors knots and how to stitch split skin back together with a hook and a fishing line. When he is eight and a quarter his father drowns.

The sea the day his father dies will be recorded as this: quiet.

 

 

After his father dies, after a funeral without a body because he sunk to the bottom to the sea, after all of that, Seungcheol’s mother says, “it doesn’t matter how strong of a swimmer you are,”

She curves a hand around Seungcheol’s shoulder, digs her fingernails into his skin, and says, “one day the tide comes for you. And it takes you, one way or another.”

It will be seven years before they pull Seungcheol’s name from all the other possible District Four tributes. His mother will not cry. Seungcheol will remember that hand on his shoulder when he was eight and think this it is. This is the tide come to claim him.

 

 

Memories will always be faulty. They will always only tell you the parts you want to hear. If you want the truth you will have to look into the history books, where they’ve put pen to paper and carved the reality of it into stone.

Seungcheol meets Jihoon at a party in the Capital, after Jihoon wins his Games. Jihoon stills looks weathered, he still looks tired and hungry but he stands straight-backed and taut shouldered and strong jawed. He hates the people that surround him. Seungcheol doesn’t blame him.

No, that’s wrong. That’s not right at all.

Seungcheol sees Jihoon for the first time during his victory tour. A tiny boy at the front of the crowd of District Seven. He had still looked angry, for how small and young he was. Seungcheol had been barely fifteen when he had won his Games, which means Jihoon would have been fourteen, a few years off from his own Games.

No, still wrong. Try again. We promise we’ll get this right.

They meet in an elevator in the Capital. Jihoon has not won his Games yet, Seungcheol has won his. The tributes for Four this year are both eighteen, both built strong and handy with their own weapons. Jihoon is small. Seungcheol thinks he doesn’t stand a chance.

Here’s what really happened. We swear.

Seungcheol meets Jihoon for the first time when he watched him in his interview. It will be a Hunger Games that lasts a week and half and ends with Jihoon crushing the tribute from Five’s skull under a rock before Jihoon meets Seungcheol in return.

 

 

History will always be written by the winners.

Perhaps memories are all you have.

 

 

Seungcheol wins his Games because he is from Four and he is equals parts smart and strong and charismatic. Maybe he’s a little young but in the end that doesn’t matter, it seems. He succeeds in the Arena and is well liked enough outside of it.

“Ladies and gentleman,” sometimes Seungcheol hears the voice in his head when he’s trying to sleep, “the winner of the 66th Hunger Games!”

Three years later Jihoon will be reaped from the pool of tributes at Seven and people will write him off too quickly. Too small, not enough built up muscle, how did he even survive in Seven to begin with? Can he even hold an axe? Seungcheol is less quick to dismiss him. Maybe there’s something in Jihoon’s eyes that makes Seungcheol think things run deeper.

The 69th Hunger games are boring. Jihoon hides for the first week because he is nimble as well as small and that combination proves fruitful. There are grumblings in the Capital of a boy who doesn’t deserve it winning because he knew how to stay out of sight.

The last three days of his Games Jihoon extracts himself from hiding and kills the last three tributes. One he sends off to drown in the strong current river the arena has this year, another he lets burn up in a fire. The third he beats over the head with a rock, until his face is nothing but red pulp and shards of skull that look like frosted glass.

Seungcheol watches from the couch in his home in Victor’s Village as they crown this small boy the winner from District Seven.

 

 

“Come to Four with me sometime,” Seungcheol says. It is the 71st Hunger Games and they are both mentors. Seungcheol’s tributes are the fourteen year old daughter of a fisherman he sees a lot of himself in and the boy is seventeen and too willowy to make it very far. Seungcheol imagines he lived a comfortable life with no fear of the Reaping, convinced if his name were picked someone would volunteer for him.

There’s a lot of politics when it comes to volunteering that Seungcheol does not get involved in. This time it seems simply that the politics was not on this boy's side.

“What would I do in Four?” Jihoon replies. He’s peeling an apple with a sharp knife, where one slip would slice his finger open. “I never learnt how to swim.”

Jihoon’s tributes were early outs. A shaking boy and his shivering girl counterpart who died three hours into the first day because they let themselves be more scared then they were smart. Seungcheol feels hurt, sometimes, when his tributes die. Jihoon did not even flinch when all that was left of District Seven, a girl with short blonde hair, had an arrow pierced in her breastbone that made her spit up blood.

“I could teach you,” Seungcheol plucks a slice of apple from Jihoon’s fingers, pops it into his mouth.

Jihoon shakes his head, “who says I want to learn?”

 

 

In the Capital they bathe with soap that smells of fruits and flowers and spices because it’s not bad enough that their stomachs are so indulgent, their skin must be indulgent too.

The smell is always too strong for Seungcheol, who is used to the bland soaps of District Four that leave you clean but still smelling of salt and seaweed. When he is a mentor Seungcheol bathes and smells of sandalwood and warmth and it’s like the Capital is trying to scrub his district out of him those days.

Jihoon, when he first arrives in the Capital, always smells of bark and pine needles and sap. It suits the parts of Jihoon he keeps inward, his strong roots and his sturdy foundation. A few days in and the soap turns him into a pomegranate and it suits Jihoon’s outside more - small, pink and ripe.

 

 

Memories will always be faulty. Except this. Seungcheol remembers this like he’s watching it happen over and over again.

He kisses Jihoon at the close of the 71st Hunger Games. Neither of their tributes have won, some burly boy from Two has taken it. They’ll say this was a good Games, a fair Games, an entertaining one.

Seungcheol will remember the 71st Hunger Games as the Games where he kisses Jihoon, silhouetted by the buildings of a city he hates and hidden from all the people who just want to watch him.

Seungcheol will remember Jihoon had looked frustrated, a plane of wrinkles creasing his forehead, and Seungcheol had curled a hand around his neck and pulled his forward. Seungcheol will remember slotting their mouths together, awkward and unplanned and unmarked territory.

Jihoon will breathe out through his nose in a sigh that Seungcheol can feel rise through Jihoon’s chest and reverberate through his own. Jihoon will fist his hands in Seungcheol’s dress hurt, pull him that small bit closer. Jihoon will feel as soft as a ripe fruit in that moment.

Seungcheol will remember that Jihoon had bit his lip, that hard edge to him he’s never lost and he will not let be forgotten.

 

 

The first person Seungcheol had ever kissed was a girl from Four. A mess of brown curls and soft, small hands that she had let Seungcheol hold a few times.

She had kissed him on a pier, wind whipping their clothes and spraying water on the hems of Seungcheol’s pants. This was after his father died, a few years before Seungcheol won his Games.

Seungcheol is not sure what happened to her. Perhaps the tide came to take her the same way it did his father.

 

 

They call Jihoon beautiful. They call his features soft and his eyes bright and they call him beautiful. The beautiful Victor from District Seven, you remember him, right? The small one with the eyes, with the cheeks and the nose. Those were good Games, weren’t they?

Oftentimes the reputation of a Games after it’s close is dependant on the Victor. Because that’s who you remember most, isn’t it? That’s the only person worth remembering.

They will remember Jihoon as a small, beautiful thing worth protecting. They will remember his Games as a good one.

 

 

“Do you sometimes wish you hadn’t won?” Seungcheol asks Jihoon.

They’re at the party for the Victor. The boy from Two is dressed in a suit as people from the Capital fawn over him and the way his muscles look in the tightness of his jacket. Seungcheol is drinking disgusting Capital liquor, fruity like their soaps and perfumes.

“Don’t be stupid,” Jihoon spits, like he can’t believe Seungcheol would even ask the question. “You’d rather be dead, Seungcheol?”

Seungcheol sighs. The moon beams from above the party, tinged with oranges. Seungcheol does not think he’s seen a white moon since the day he won.

“I’m so tired, sometimes,” Seungcheol says, “maybe it would have been better to be sleeping this whole time.”

 

 

“The cure of anything,” Seungcheol’s mother used to say, cleaning a cut on his knee or nursing a split in his lip. She would push his hair back against his head and say, “is saltwater. Sweat, tears or the sea.”

She had read it in a book somewhere, Seungcheol would come to know. He will never forget the way her voice had sounded when she said it, regardless.

 

 

“What was the first thing you did after you won?” Jihoon is in Seungcheol’s quarters. In a few days they will board a train back to their Districts. Seungcheol will return to the salt and the sea and Jihoon will find himself again amongst the trees and axes.

“I bought my mother a boat,” Seungcheol says, “she sold the one we had after my father died. It was his. I bought her a new one.”

Jihoon hums, “does she use it much?”

“She’s never used it,” Seungcheol shakes his head, “not even once.”

“If I come visit you in Four, will you take me on your boat?”

“If you want,” Seungcheol replies, “if you’re not scared.”

Jihoon raises an eyebrow and scoffs. “I’m not scared of much these days, Seungcheol.”

_I know,_ Seungcheol thinks, _but I always want to make sure you’re safe._

Seungcheol cups Jihoon’s jaw, curves of it fitting into Seungcheol’s palm, and pulls him forward to kiss him. Their on the couch in Seungcheol’s quarters, spread out inches apart from each other in the low light of the fire that burns in front of them. It’s not a real fire, there’s no real logs burning, too dangerous, even in the presence of Victors. Jihoon had mentioned it as soon as he saw it.

They kiss languidly. Neither of them make a move to pull away for a long time, hands on each other’s faces and mouths working against each other’s. Seungcheol never learned how to breathe salt water. He thinks, in these moments with their mouths pressed together and their breaths mingling, that if he really tried he could learn to breathe Jihoon instead.

 

 

The train lets out a whistle behind them.

“Come with me to Four,” Seungcheol says. _Let me show you the sea and the wind and the boat I bought for my mother._

Jihoon smiles. He tugs Seungcheol into the shadows of an alley and kisses him closed-mouthed. “I’ll see you at the next Games, Seungcheol.”

 

 

They do not tell this story in the history books. They never will.

Sometimes your memories will be all you have.

**Author's Note:**

> i guess in this universe there is none of the orig characters but i suppose their would be a revolution at some point. and in a lot of ways seungcheol and jihoon are just finnick and johanna, so i guess that's how they'd end up.


End file.
